Friday, August 29, 2014

There has, of course, been enormous attention focused on Russia this year, chiefly for its machinations in Ukraine. But scholars have been paying greater and more critical attention to the Russian Orthodox Church's relationship to the state over the last century, and wondering, in part, whether current relations do not in fact reflect old patterns. A book set for October release will continue this important critical analysis: Daniela Kalkandjieva, The Russian Orthodox Church, 1917-1948: From Decline to Resurrection (Routledge, 2014), 384pp.

About this book we are told:

This book tells the remarkable story of the decline and revival of the
Russian Orthodox Church in the first half of the twentieth century and
the astonishing U-turn in the attitude of the Soviet Union’s leaders
towards the church. In the years after 1917 the Bolsheviks’
anti-religious policies, the loss of the former western territories of
the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union’s isolation from the rest of
the world and the consequent separation of Russian emigrés from the
church were disastrous for the church, which declined very significantly
in the 1920s and 1930s. However, when Poland was partitioned in 1939
between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Stalin allowed the Patriarch
of Moscow, Sergei, jurisdiction over orthodox congregations in the
conquered territories and went on, later, to encourage the church to
promote patriotic activities as part of the resistance to the Nazi
invasion. He agreed a Concordat with the church in 1943, and continued
to encourage the church, especially its claims to jurisdiction over
émigré Russian orthodox churches, in the immediate postwar period. Based
on extensive original research, the book puts forward a great deal of
new information and overturns established thinking on many key points.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

It has been well known among scholars since at least 1970 that the office Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and some Lutheran Christians call "bishop" is a relatively late development, that is, the idea that there is one figure with exclusive "jurisdiction" (to use a notoriously slippery term) over a discrete and delimited territory is probably a late second-century development, if not later. Such a phenomenon--the so-called monepiscopate--is, as far as we can see, something that predates our more customary understanding of the episcopacy--one man to one city. But a new book, released this summer, looks like it will challenge some of these understandings: Alistair C. Stewart, Original Bishops, The: Office and Order in the First Christian Communities (Baker Academic, 2014), 416pp.

About this book we are told:

A leading authority on early Christianity provides a new starting point
for studying the origins of church offices, offering careful readings of
the ancient evidence.
This work provides a new starting point for studying the origins of
church offices. Alistair Stewart, a leading authority on early
Christianity and a meticulous scholar, provides essential groundwork for
historical and theological discussions. Stewart refutes a long-held
consensus that church offices emerged from collective leadership at the
end of the first century. He argues that governance by elders was
unknown in the first centuries and that bishops emerged at the beginning
of the church; however, they were nothing like bishops of a later
period. The church offices as presently known emerged in the late second
century. Stewart debunks widespread assumptions and misunderstandings,
offers carefully nuanced readings of the ancient evidence, and fully
interacts with pertinent secondary scholarship.

From the reception of imperial ekphraseis in Hagia Sophia to the sounds
and smells of the back streets of Constantinople, the sensory perception
of Byzantium is an area that lends itself perfectly to an investigation
into the experience of the Byzantine world. The theme of experience
embraces all aspects of Byzantine studies and the Experiencing Byzantium
symposium brought together archaeologists, architects, art historians,
historians, musicians and theologians in a common quest to step across
the line that divides how we understand and experience the Byzantine
world and how the Byzantines themselves perceived the sensual aspects of
their empire and also their faith, spirituality, identity and the
nature of 'being' in Byzantium.The papers in this volume derive from the
44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held for the Society for
the Promotion of Byzantine Studies by the University of Newcastle and
University of Durham, at Newcastle upon Tyne in April 2011. They are
written by a group of international scholars who have crossed
disciplinary boundaries to approach an understanding of experience in
the Byzantine world.Experiencing Byzantium is volume 18 in the series
published by Ashgate on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of
Byzantine Studies.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

As I have noted repeatedly already, this year marks the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War and all the associated and consequent catastrophes--from the Armenian genocide and Russian revolution to the collapse of various empires. Next year one of the most consequential of those collapses, with far-reaching consequences for Eastern Christians, will be reviewed anew in Eugene Rogan's forthcoming book, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East (Basic, 2015), 448pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

In The Fall of the Ottomans, Eugene Rogan weaves a captivating account of the First World War in the Middle East. Supplied by Germany with guns and military advisors, the Ottoman Empire entered the war with gusto, taking on the Russians in the Caucasus and the French and British in North Africa and South Asia. Caught off guard by the Ottomans’ innovative tactics and surprisingly effective forces, the Entente armies rapidly lost ground.

As Rogan shows, it was only by exploiting divisions within the Arab world that the Entente powers were able to break the Ottomans and turn the tide of the war. The ensuing treaties laid the groundwork for the modern Middle East: the Ottomans’ Arab holdings were distributed among the French and British victors, whose control over Palestine and Northern Iraq would have disastrous and lasting consequences. A sweeping narrative of battles and political intrigue from Gallipoli to Damascus, The Fall of the Ottomans shows how a European conflict became a global conflagration.

Muslims and Crusaders supplements and
counterbalances the numerous books that tell the story of the crusading
period from the European point of view, enabling readers to achieve a
broader and more complete perspective on the period. It presents the
Crusades from the perspective of those against whom they were waged, the
Muslim peoples of the Levant. The book introduces the reader to the
most significant issues that affected their responses to the European
crusaders, and their descendants who would go on to live in the Latin
Christian states that were created in the region.
This book
combines chronological narrative, discussion of important areas of
scholarly enquiry and evidence from primary sources to give a
well-rounded survey of the period. It considers not only the military
meetings between Muslims and the Crusaders, but also the personal,
political, diplomatic and trade interactions that took place between
Muslims and Franks away from the battlefield. Through the use of a wide
range of translated primary source documents, including chronicles,
dynastic histories, religious and legal texts and poetry, the people of
the time are able to speak to us in their own voices.

Friday, August 15, 2014

My friend Nicholas Denysenko is a prolific fellow. I interviewed him in late 2012 about his first book,The Blessing of Waters and Epiphany: The Eastern Liturgical Tradition. Now his second book in as many years has recently been published: Chrismation: A Primer for Catholics (Liturgical Press, 2014), xxxvii+209pp. I am looking forward to teaching my graduate class on liturgy next year precisely so that I can have the students read this book, for with my students few topics incite as much heated though inconclusive debate as the topic of the ordering of the sacraments of initiation in the Latin Church.

This new book is at once deeply immersed in the history and theology of the East, particularly (but not exclusively) Byzantine practice, but also written, as the sub-title clearly suggests, for Catholics navigating these issues in their own contexts. It is not in any way a polemical work in which an Orthodox apologist attempts to, well, pontificate about how the Latin Church should structure her life. It is, on the contrary, irenical and helpful scholarship at its best. To use a phrase I used in my own book on the papacy, a phrase that the late Pope John Paul II and the late Margaret O'Gara both popularized, Nick's book is an "ecumenical gift-exchange" of the best sort: it looks at some of the contemporary struggles around sacramental practice in the Latin Church and says, with genuine solicitude and without any triumphalism, "Have you considered some possible alternative practices used in the East?" The history and theology of those practices is then displayed here along with some suggestions as to possible ways forward. It is not smugly prescriptive but it is, to reclaim the verb I just used in its typical pejorative sense, a pontification of the best sort: the word, of course, comes from the Latin pontifex and is usually translated as bridge-builder. Nick builds bridges between, if you will, old and new Rome, offering the former some of the wisdom that comes from the practices of the latter in case they may be of use. In short, this is ecumenical scholarship of the best possible kind.

I asked Nick for an interview about this book, and here are his thoughts.

AD: Tell us what led you from a book on Theophany and water blessings to a book on Chrismation

ND: In
writing the book on the blessing of waters, I engaged numerous
historical monographs on the history of the rites of initiation. These
studies opened my eyes to the labyrinthian history of Confirmation in
the West and contributed to my interest in the question of anointing
with Chrism. To be honest, I was inspired largely by my classroom
experience. Students were shocked and perplexed by my historical
presentations of Confirmation, and I noted a dissonance between the
liturgical theology of the sacrament and its popular perception among
the laity. It became a research project at a meeting of the North
American Academy of Liturgy when several Episcopalian and Catholic
colleagues remarked that the Orthodox are the only ones who have really
retained tradition. I wondered to myself, "have we? Do we really
understand the anointing with Chrism, or do we just define it through
Western lenses?" These are the events and conversations that inspired me
to look into the question.

AD: Your preface notes that much of the inspiration for writing
came from participating in real baptisms and chrismations with real
people. Following something Robert Taft said a few years ago about
liturgical studies moving from a focus on texts to the experiences of
people in the pews, do you see your book as much more "experiential" in
nature? Is that what you mean by using the word "primer" in your
sub-title?

Real
life experience is central. I have provided diaconal service or chanting
at dozens of Chrismations, and no two pastoral explanations are alike.
Two aspects of the rite of Chrismation struck me profoundly: first, when
infants are anointed, Chrismation is really a continuation of the rite
of Baptism. There is no particular moment where the assembly pauses with
the deacon announcing, "we have now transitioned from Baptism to
Chrismation and N. is receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit." The memory
of Chrismation as belonging to a complete process of initiation
remained with me when I began to research this topic in earnest. Also,
when converts are received into the Church, they tend to describe it as a
strong liturgical moment marking belonging. I really wanted to explore
these aspects of anointing I had observed from ritual and I believe that
my book was strengthened by including this dimension. My use of
"primer" is a short way of saying, "here's an immersion into the real
meaning of Chrismation."

AD: What was your purpose, as an Orthodox deacon and professor
of theology, in addressing your book to Catholics? Was that focus born
out of your experience at LMU and your Catholic students there?

This book is for
everyone; Orthodox, too. But I primarily addressed Catholics because the
tension in academic and pastoral discourse on Chrismation often leaves
representatives of all sides referring to Orthodox Chrismation as
supporting a particular point. My hope in this book was to bring the two
liturgical traditions into dialogue, not so that one tradition would be
absorbed by the other, but to promote healthy mutual understanding. Let
me add this: ecumenical dialogue is a precious asset for promoting
self-understanding, too.

AD: My own Catholic graduate students, most of whom work in parochial
schools or parishes as catechists or RCIA directors, regularly get into
lengthy and inconclusive debates with each other and with me about the
proper ordering of the sacraments of initiation. They are often
sympathetic to the historical arguments about the order
Baptism-Chrismation-Communion, but worry that restoring that order would drain
Catholic programs, parishes, and parochial schools of many kids who
attend only long enough to get confirmed at or after eighth grade. They
thus view the historical ordering as a real risk today not simply to the
viability of schools but also to the opportunity for longer formation
and catechesis. I admit I never have any good counter-arguments here.
What are your thoughts?

I think that
Catholics would really benefit from initiating their children into the
complete life of the kingdom by allowing them to participate in the
Eucharist. The current sequence of sacraments results in Eucharistic
communities stratified by age groups. I really sympathize with ministers
and catechists who are committed to retention of youth, but I am
utterly unconvinced that Confirmation as adolescent initiation is an
effective approach. Initiating all our children into the fullness of the
life of the Kingdom and permitting them to partake of the banquet is
essential for faith communities that promote and exalt the dignity of
human life. All Christians should be concerned with retaining youth and
encouraging them to exercise their divine citizenship. Too often, we
hijack sacraments in attempts to fulfill a particular objective, but in
so doing, we do not honor the fullness of Christ's body. In an ideal
world, I'd love to contribute to a thinking group that works on creating
mystagogical programs that encourage our youth to live in a Spirit of
thanksgiving and connect their Eucharistic participation with daily
life. To do so, isn't delaying initiation into the Eucharistic assembly
setting them back?

AD: Unlike some other sacramental and liturgical actions you
review, you note that Chrismation or Confirmation, whether in the East
or West, is too often for most people "a cloaked mystery" (xx) whose
meaning it is not easy to extract. Tell us briefly why you think that
is.

Despite the
twentieth-century linkage of liturgy to ecclesiology, in practice, many
sacraments are still private family matters. If we think about
unrepeatable sacraments like Baptism and Chrismation, they often occur
as quick and necessary pastoral tasks without much community engagement.
Obviously, the reinvigoration of the RCIA has contributed to a paradigm
shift on this matter, but in general, Baptism and Chrismation are often
faded memories and we gain a glimpse of these sacraments when we have
to participate as godparents or friends of families "invited" to the
event. Given the theological and soteriological weight invested in
initiation, the gap between "faded memory" and "capacity to shape daily
life" needs to be filled. I'm hoping that this book might prove to be an
asset in filling that gap.

AD: You note that despite some similarities as a post-baptismal
rite conferring the gift of the Holy Spirit, nonetheless Orthodox ideas
of Chrismation and Catholic ideas of Confirmation "have many
differences" (xxv), and one of these is the number and timing of
anointings. It seems to me that in some respects contemporary
(post-conciliar) RC practice tends to "fudge" the difference or blur the
boundaries between Baptism and Confirmation by conferring at baptism
"the first of two different anointings with Chrism" (xxvii) on children
(but not adolescents or adults) before their first Confession and
Communion, both of which occur before their Confirmation. Is that your
read of the situation?

I discuss this history
in the book. Catholic infants are indeed chrismated after Baptism,
whereas those who participate in the RCIA do not receive the
post-baptismal anointing. The separation becomes problematic when we
also separate theologies and make Confirmation THE sacrament of the
Spirit, as if Baptism is not pneumatological. If Confirmation continues
and completes Baptism, then it would be best to restore its order so
that it literally completes baptism in sequence. This requires a
pastoral adjustment permitting presbyters to confirm, because the
retention of episcopal presidency at Confirmation - which is a
historically venerable tradition - simply cannot be sustained in our
time without significantly impacting the meaning of Confirmation.

AD: Part of your emphasis
through the book, you signal in your introduction, will be on the
"crisis of belonging" experienced by people today, especially when it
comes to the "institutional" church. When you talk about that crisis,
what do you have in mind? Is it just that people don't come to liturgy on Sunday as often as they should, or is there more to it than that?

Almost
all churches in America are experiencing attrition, no matter how much
we try to bolster our numbers. For the Orthodox Churches, a good
introduction to the topic of belonging is provided by Amy Slagle in her
recent study on converts, The Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace: American Conversions to Orthodox Christianity. We are on the tail end of a painful paradigm shift. In the
past, one used to attend the parish or congregation of one's village.
In urban areas, people attended church in their neighborhood, often by
foot. Now, one might drive 25 or more miles to church. Church is a
significant commitment and people attend for all kinds of reasons that
ultimately begin with a sense of belonging. In the paradigm shift, the
criterion for choosing a church - and yes, it is a matter of voluntary
selection - is whether or not one can identify with the pastoral
leadership and the people to say with confidence, "we belong."
Sacramental theology is all about "belonging," and in this study, I have
attempted to demonstrate how the anointing with Chrism happens to be a
rite that communicates a rich sense of belonging to the community of the
Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I compared the language of
the liturgy and its expression of belonging to the responses of people
who experienced anointing in an attempt to parse out how Chrismation
communicates belonging. When we talk about the sacraments or mysteries
of the Church, it's essential to illuminate that initiation is not
fleeting: one does not merely belong to a congregation with plenty of
single people where one can enjoy a happy social life with like-minded
folks. Rather, one might have joined a culturally and politically
pluralistic community where difference prevails with one exception:
everyone participating can refer to a common citizenship in God's
kingdom, the most powerful foundation for meaningful daily life.
Baptism, Chrismation, and Eucharist deliver an eschatological reality:
we belong to God's family. What we need is to find creative ways to
communicate why this beautiful reality of belonging to God - forever -
can be life-giving and life-changing today, in this life. In my opinion,
this is an urgent pastoral matter.

AD: Your second chapter reviews the diversity of practices
governing the reception of converts. If you could suddenly vault
yourself to a position of omnipotence over all Orthodoxy, would you
retain that diversity or try to institute one universal practice, and in
either case why?

In
principle, I find liturgical diversity healthy, and I'll be writing
about this in the next manuscript I need to finish. In contemporary
Orthodoxy, we need an adjustment that brings more uniformity to the
rites of receiving converts. In our time, conversion is really
equivalent to changing denominations (the unchurched are baptized, and
not received by anointing). Pastors need to exercise discretion when
they require candidates to renounce particular teachings because the
received tradition espouses a theology of exclusion that does not
conform to progress in the ecumenical movement. If I had the power you
describe here, I would require Orthodox seminarians to learn much more
about the historical and theological traditions of the West to
understand why certain positions were assumed. Too often, we
repeat polemical statements we inherited for no good reason. I think one
can cause irreparable damage by accentuating theological deficiencies
in Catholic and Reformed traditions, and requiring renunciations only
perpetuates this problem. Asking people to renounce ideas also denotes
some renunciation of the communities who hold some variants of those
theological ideas. In real life, this can isolate people and create
unnecessary friction, especially if the person who has become Orthodox
through anointing with Chrism belongs to a non-Orthodox family.
Instead of renouncing, why not affirm with enthusiasm what the Orthodox
Church confesses and teaches while helping our own faithful understand
other Christians without insulting them?

AD: Your fourth chapter repeats the oft-heard line about Confirmation
being a sacrament in search of a theology. Why is that? How did it come
to seem theologically adrift?

Bp. Kevin Rhoades, Diocese of Ft. Wayne-South Bend

Confirmation's
detachment from Baptism became permanent around the thirteenth century
because of the Roman reservation of episcopal presidency at the
sacrament. The Church's geographical diffusion did not permit bishops to
visit parishes frequently which resulted in delayed Confirmation. With
children receiving Confirmation at an older age, a new theology emerged
in conjunction with this ritual evolution that explained the delay.
Confirmation was construed as a sacrament of strength and maturity
demonstrating one's attainment of sufficient development to live as
faithful Christians. This explanation is somewhat incoherent with the
liturgical theology of Confirmation, which reveals the sacrament as
imparting the Christic offices of priest, prophet, and king to
participants and granting them the manifold gift of the Holy Spirit. We
learn an important lesson of liturgical history from Confirmation:
pastoral explanations of sacramental meaning evolve in response to the
historical circumstances that dictate the sacrament's evolution. The
existence of multiple theologies of Confirmation reveal it as a
sacrament in search of a theology.

AD: You note that the
Pauline reforms after Vatican II attempted to more clearly restore a
connection between Baptism and Confirmation. Do you think that intent
been undermined by the diversity of practice across even just American
dioceses, where some retain a clearer connection while others interpose
one or both of Confession and Communion (and not always in that order)?

The
renewal of baptismal vows and confessions of faith at Confirmation
refer to Baptism. The most important Pauline reform was the illumination
of Confirmation as the sacrament imparting the gift of the Holy Spirit,
mostly through the adoption of the Byzantine formula, "the seal of the
gift of the Holy Spirit." The diversity of ritual practices in the Roman
Church manifests the competing theologies of Confirmation. I think a
stronger rehabilitation of the Eucharist as the repeatable and repeated
sacrament of initiation is the key to promoting a sound understanding of
how the sacraments of initiation establish a pattern of God giving the
gift of the Spirit to the assembly: in baptism, anointing, and
Eucharist, over and over again.

AD: You note (p.146) that Paul VI's adaptation of
Byzantine emphasis in the revised rite of Confirmation went largely
unnoticed by the lay faithful. But what about Orthodox liturgists and
theologians, then and since? Have they remarked on this at all or seen
it as significant?

The Orthodox theologians tend to view Catholic sacramental
theology and liturgical reform as a reference point for comparison. To
be honest, most Orthodox theologian haven't attended to revisions in
Catholic liturgy and tend to contribute to the fissure between
perception and reality. Has anyone heard of an Orthodox theologian
discussing the composition of three new Eucharistic prayers and their
addition to the Roman Missal? Paul Meyendorff's contributions to the
Faith and Order Commission's work on the sacraments of (the World
Council of Churches) exemplifies Orthodox attention to the realities of
liturgical and sacramental life in global Christianity. Typically,
Orthodox theologians are asked to explain their own tradition, so it is
most convenient to refer to other Christian traditions by referring to
their differences. I hope that my work might inspire Orthodox
theologians to read the Catholic liturgical tradition more carefully, to
note similarities in ritual structure, euchology, and especially the
theological foundations underpinning liturgical structures. Perhaps a
more careful reading might help the Orthodox realize how much we
actually have in common with other Christians. I have more to say about
this, but I'll save it for my next book on liturgical reform.

AD: You note that "the Vatican II reform of confirmation was incomplete" (p.153). If Francis dies tomorrow, and Catholics elected you as pope, what would you do to complete the reforms?

Well,
as a faithful son of the Orthodox Church, I'd have to respectfully
decline, despite my fondness for Papal vesture. All kidding aside, the
most urgent task would be a restoration of Confirmation to infants,
followed by granting infants access to holy communion. If the Eucharist
is the sacrament of the Kingdom, the Church needs to ritualize it and
allow children to partake of the table since they too participate in the
offering. Such a ritual reform would be faithful to Roman Catholic
tradition and Catholic theologians would certainly capture the
opportunity to expound theologically on the reform.

I
just finished a book on contemporary Orthodox architecture, which is
currently under review by a major university press. Now I am in the
process of completing a book on liturgical reform in the Orthodox
Church. In this book, I'll assess Orthodox participation in the
liturgical movement and compare instances of liturgical reform with
ample attention to Father Alexander Schmemann and New Skete Monastery.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Early this year, Our Sunday Visitor, the largest Catholic newspaper in the United States, commissioned me to write a long essay on Orthodox-Catholic relations on the eve of the papal and patriarchal visit to Jerusalem. Francis and Bartholomew were both going to the holy city in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of their predecessors, Paul VI and Athenagoras, meeting there in 1964. In my essay I reviewed centuries of Orthodox-Catholic relations and then looked at where we are today, what outstanding issues remain to be resolved, and what prospects for the future look like.

This wee book, which I read in a couple of hours yesterday, contains a preface by Chryssavgis (an archdeacon of the Ecumenical Throne and well-known Orthodox theologian) and is published in Fordham University Press's welcome Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought imprint. The very brief introduction is written by the metropolitan of Pergamon and very well-known Greek theologian John Zizioulas who uses a phrase of his mentor Georges Florovsky to describe the East and West as two conjoined sisters who actually cannot be separated from one another without very serious damage.

After these short preliminaries, Chryssavgis gives us a very helpful chronology of the events and personalities leading up to the 1964 meeting, and details of that meeting also. This essay is nicely done, with just enough detail to set the scene without overwhelming the reader with the tedious trivia ("and then, at 10:17am, the pope went to the bathroom and had to ask the patriarch the way...") one sometimes finds in accounts like this.

Daley deftly reviews the details of the development of the international dialogue, but also, justly, spends a good bit of time on its coterminous North American counterpart, of which he has been a member since 1981 and, more recently, the executive secretary for the Catholic side. As he notes, the North American dialogue "has been at times, if only by default, the world's main forum for constructive Orthodox-Catholic conversation" (31). He reveals one detail of which I was not aware: the very first Catholic members proposed for the North American dialogue in March 1965 included "three Eastern-rite Catholic priests (two of them Jesuits from Fordham)" (33) and this caused no small alarm on the Orthodox side. Thus one sees that the "Uniate" issue was neuralgic long before the international dialogue tried to address it in the infamous Balamand statement of 1993.

I met the members of the North American dialogue in the autumn of 2002 when they met in Ottawa at Saint Paul University, where I was a doctoral student. (Several of us grad students volunteered to serve wine and various amuse-bouches to the dialogue at a reception--a way not only for free food and wine but, to my mind, the even more important access to long and profitable conversations with the Orthodox and Catholic hierarchs and theologians there assembled.) It was very clear to me then that they got along well and worked profitably in large part, as Daley confirms here, because of the shared cultural background of the participants as well as the fact that many people have been involved for more than a quarter-century and over that time have come to "deeply cherish each other's friendship" (44).

The final chapter consists of an introduction by Matthew Baker, a newly ordained Greek Orthodox priest and outstanding doctoral student at Fordham who is already a very accomplished young scholar from whom we can expect further important work. Baker very intelligently introduces us to an essay by Georges Florovsky that he unearthed, one that was published in Paris in 1964 but never translated or given wider dissemination which, Baker rightly notes, is odd given the huge influence Florovsky had in twentieth-century Orthodoxy and given, moreover, his widespread involvement in the ecumenical movement. Baker translates the essay here from the Russian original and annotates it with a few useful footnotes. There is nothing terribly new here, but we would do well to continue to adhere to Florovsky's counsel to always seek out "sober historical memory [as] the indispensable guarantee of responsible action" (61), something with which the impudent sectarians frothing at the mouth about the "pan-heresy of ecumenism" and the "errors of the Latins" seem to have so little intimate congress, then as now.

In sum, Dialogue of Love: Breaking the Silence of Centuries is indeed, as we say in French, a souvenir. That verb is a reflexive one in French: Je me souviens (Quebec's official motto, as it happens), usually "I remember" but equally "I remind myself." And we all need to remind ourselves gratefully of the courage and foresight of our forbears fifty years ago to seek each other out and to begin the dialogue and work for unity, which has not ended. We need, indeed, to remember, as I said elsewhere about the 2014 Jerusalem visit, that the search for unity is not an optional extra but a dominical imperative: the Lord expects us to be one. Please God we will not have to wait another fifty years for that to happen.

This volume in the Cambridge History of Christianity presents the
'Golden Age' of patristic Christianity. After episodes of persecution by
the Roman government, Christianity emerged as a licit religion enjoying
imperial patronage and eventually became the favoured religion of the
empire. The articles in this volume discuss the rapid transformation of
Christianity during late antiquity, giving specific consideration to
artistic, social, literary, philosophical, political, inter-religious
and cultural aspects. The volume moves away from simple dichotomies and
reductive schematizations (e.g., 'heresy v. orthodoxy') toward an
inclusive description of the diverse practices and theories that made up
Christianity at this time. Whilst proportional attention is given to
the emergence of the Great Church within the Roman Empire, other topics
are treated as well - such as the development of Christian communities
outside the empire.

After this, if you don't want immediately to buy the intervening volumes, then jump ahead to volume 5, The Cambridge History of Christianity (744pp). This volume, edited by Michael Angold, is devoted to Eastern Christianity. About it the publisher tells us:

About this volume the publisher tells us:

This volume brings together in one compass the
Orthodox Churches - the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople and
the Russian, Armenian, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Syrian Churches. It
follows their fortunes from the late Middle Ages until modern times -
exactly the period when their history has been most neglected.
Inevitably, this emphasises differences in teachings and experience, but
it also brings out common threads, most notably the resilience
displayed in the face of alien and often hostile political regimes. The
central theme is the survival against the odds of Orthodoxy in its many
forms into the modern era. The last phase of Byzantium proves to have
been surprisingly important in this survival. It provided Orthodoxy with
the intellectual, artistic and spiritual reserves to meet later
challenges. The continuing vitality of the Orthodox Churches is evident
for example in the Sunday School Movement in Egypt and the Zoe
brotherhood in Greece.

The value of this book for Eastern Christians is that it was one of the first places to document, in scrupulous scholarly detail, the whole phenomenon of dhimmitude, about which few people had heard in the 1980s though we have, of course, since seen a considerable number of books on the topic in the last three decades. The articles on that topic, and many others, as well as the footnotes, remain invaluable.

About this book we are told in the publisher's blurb:

How did the vast Ottoman empire, stretching from the Balkans to the
Sahara, endure for more than four centuries despite its great ethnic and
religious diversity? The classic work on this plural society, the
two-volume Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, offered seminal
reinterpretations of the empire's core institutions and has sparked more
than a generation of innovative work since it was first published in
1982. This new, abridged, and reorganized edition, with a substantial
new introduction and bibliography covering issues and scholarship of the
past thirty years, has been carefully designed to be accessible to a
wider readership.

This volume's focus is threefold, thus corresponding to its tri-partite
topical division: to analyze Eastern monasticism's unique place in the
life transforming journey to theosis; Eastern monasticism's
hospitality and mutual encounters with culture; and Eastern and Western
monasticism's hospitality to Christian and non-Christian religions,
including Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam (even though Islam does not have
any monastic institution, its adherents have been historically in
dialogue with Christian monastics and have the potential to achieve a
spiritual affinity with monks of other religious traditions). The three
parts of the volume share one unifying argument: monasticism's special
call to spiritually symbiotic relationship or impact on the very
socio-politic-historic structures of reality. The topics are explored
from historical, theological, and literary standpoints. The volume's
overall intention is to help make monastic ecumenical engagement or its
potential for inter-faith dialogue better known, appreciated, and
relevant within inter-religious dialogue.

The publisher also helpfully provides a detailed table of contents in this PDF. I hope to interview Ines about both books in the coming weeks.

Her second book, set for release in the spring of 2015 by Routledge, is entitled Monasticism in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics. About this book we are told:

This
book looks at Eastern and Western monasticism’s continuous and
intensive interactions with society in Eastern Europe, Russia and the
Former Soviet Republics. It discusses the role monastic’s played in
fostering national identities; and the potentiality of monasteries and
religious orders to be vehicles of ecumenism and inter-religious
dialogue within and beyond national boundaries. Using a country-specific
analysis, the book highlights the monastic tradition and monastic
establishments. It addresses gaps in the academic study of religion in
Eastern European and Russian historiography, and looks at the role of
monasticism as a cultural and national identity forming determinant in
the region.

We are also given the table of contents:

Monasticism in Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Republics: An Introduction Ines Angeli Murzaku

Part 1: Monasticism in Eastern: Central Europe 1. Monasticism in Bulgaria Daniela Kalkandjieva 2. Croatian Monasticism and Glagolitic Tradition: Glagolitic Letters at Home and Abroad Julia Verkholantsev 3. Monasticism in Slovakia and Slovak National Development Stanislav J. Kirschbaum 4. Catholic Monasticism, Orders, and Societies in Hungary: Ten Centuries of Expansion, Disaster and Revival James P. Niessen 5. Religion and Identity in Montenegro Jelena Dzankic 6. Relations between the Holy Mountain and Eastern Europe c.1850-2000 Graham Speake 7. Roman-Catholic Monasticism in Poland Krystyna Górniak-Kocikowska
8. Orthodox Monasticism and the Development of the Modern Romanian
State: From Dora d’Istria’s Criticism to Cyclical Reevaluation of
Monastic Spirituality in Contemporary Romania Antonio D’Alessandri 9. Monasticism in Serbia in the Modern Period: Development, Influence, Importance Radmila Radić 10. The Church and Religious Orders in Slovenia in the Twentieth Century Kolar Bogdan 11. Between East and West, Albania's Monastic Mosaic Ines Angeli Murzaku

Part 2: Monasticism in Russia and Former Russian Republics 12. Monasticism in Modern Russia Scott Kenworthy 13. Monasticism in Russia's Far North in the Pre-Petrine Era: Social, Cultural, and Economic Interaction Jennifer Spock
14. Abbots and Artifacts: The Construction of Orthodox-Based Russian
National Identity at Resurrection "New Jerusalem" Monastery in the
Nineteenth Century Kevin Kain 15. Monasticism and the Construction of the Armenian Intellectual Tradition Sergio La Porta-Haig and Isabel Berberian 16. Monks and Monasticism in Georgia in the nineteenth and twentieth Centuries Paul Crego 17. Greco-Catholic Monasticism in Ukraine: Between Mission and Contemplation Daniel Galadza Conclusions Ines Angeli Murzaku

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Unless you've been living under a rock for over a year, you will know that we have been gearing up for the events commemorated between the end of June and this week: the Sarajevo assassination of 28 June 1914 of the heir to the Habsburg throne that led, somewhat, to the outbreak of hostilities in Europe 100 years ago this week. The destruction of the so-called Great War was widespread and nobody escaped the sorrow and bloodshed, but for Eastern Christians there is perhaps an extra sorrow in what happened not only during the war but during the subsequent revolution and civil war in Russia. Some seem never to have recovered from the loss of empire and everything that went with it, including the apparent promise of a great Orthodox power on the world stage. A new book, to be released in November, will set fresh eyes on these multiple losses: Joshua Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (Oxford UP, 2014), 288pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Imperial Apocalypse describes the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War One. Drawing material from nine different archives and hundreds of published sources, this study ties together state failure, military violence, and decolonization in a single story. Joshua Sanborn excavates the individual lives of soldiers, doctors, nurses, politicians, and civilians caught up in the global conflict along the way, creating a narrative that is both humane and conceptually rich.
The volume opens by laying out the theoretical relationship between state failure, social collapse, and decolonization, and then moves chronologically from the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 through the fierce battles and massive human dislocations of 1914-16 to the final collapse of the empire in the midst of revolution in 1917-18. Imperial Apocalypse is the first major study which treats the demise of the Russian Empire as part of the twentieth-century phenomenon of modern decolonization, and provides a readable account of military activity and political change throughout this turbulent period of war and revolution. Sanborn argues that the sudden rise of groups seeking national self-determination in the borderlands of the empire was the consequence of state failure, not its cause. At the same time, he shows how the destruction of state institutions and the spread of violence from the front to the rear led to a collapse of traditional social bonds and the emergence of a new, more dangerous, and more militant political atmosphere.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

On this loveliest of the summer festivals, so full of vibrant and abundant promise of our paschal life to come, I can do no better than to refer you to what I wrote last year about the Transfiguration and the lovely book of homilies mentioned there as well as the video of the vigil from St. Elias.

Monday, August 4, 2014

In the spring issue of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, of which I am editor, we feature an article by Christopher Brenna on Orthodox approaches to the question of human rights. This is, as the author notes, a relatively new area for theological exploration. But the relationship of Orthodoxy and rights has been examined by sociologists and political scientists in a series of new books over the last decade, the newest of which, released just this spring, is by Kristina Stoeckl, a research associate in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Vienna: The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights (Routledge, 2014). I contacted her for an interview, and here are her thoughts:

Kristina Stoeckl: In the preface of the book I reveal a piece of
biographical background and my reasons for engaging in the topic of the Russian
Orthodox Church and human rights. Readers of the preface will understand that I
have a fairly traditional Catholic background which, in my academic work, has
made me sensitive to the topic of religion in politics. They will also
understand that the book is the work of a European political theorist who
cannot but confront the towering paradigm of “postsecular society” expressed by Jürgen Habermas. I did not come to the topic of Russian Orthodoxy and human
rights because I had a pre-determined interested in human rights as such; I was
instead interested in the work of “translation” between religious content and
secular norms. The Russian Orthodox debate on human rights appeared like a good
example.
What readers of the preface will not find out is
that I have an academic background in Russian and comparative literature and
philosophy. I had the fortune to have very good teachers during my underground
studies of Russian literature and philosophy at the University of Innsbruck in
Austria: Fedor Dostoevskij, Vladimir Solov’ev, the philosophers of the Russian
Silver Age, the generation of Soviet semioticians around Jurij Lotman, and
later on also the religious thinkers of the Russian emigration were my early
guiding lights for approaching Russian thought and culture. This background is much
more evident in my first book and PhD-thesis entitled Community after
Totalitarianism and published in 2008. This
background explains why, despite all criticism of what the Russian Orthodox
Church represents today, my approach to the Russian Orthodox tradition is sympathetic.

AD: Your
first chapter notes the different responses to human rights discourse in modern
Orthodoxy, from those very critical and dismissive to those who are more
receptive. At the end of your chapter you note that the Russian Orthodox Church
has adopted rather a middle position here--not totally dismissive, but not
fully accepting, either. Why the middle position?
KS: I call the Russian Orthodox Church’s a middle
position, because it really stands for a response to the issue of human rights
that steers mid-way between a complete rejection of human rights and
acceptance. The Russian Orthodox Church published, in 2008, a document entitled
“The Russian Orthodox Church’s Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights”.
This document fundamentally changed the position on human rights which the
Church had explained eight years earlier in the “Basis of the Social Doctrine”
in 2000 (in which human rights are rejected as a sign of apostasy), but it did
not go all the way to accepting human rights as a legal instrument that should
be fully endorsed and supported by the Church. Why did the Church adopt this
middle position? In the book, I give several reasons: relevance - the Moscow
Patriarchate recognized that it cannot continue to ignore or dismiss the topic
in its internal and external relations; politics – the Moscow Patriarchate
recognized that for having a voice in politics, it better speak the language of
contemporary politics; soteriology – the Church understood very well that
Orthodox believers live in secularized societies and ask from their Church to
express itself and provide guiding lines on topics of contemporary relevance; and
lastly individuals – the individual members of the Russian Orthodox Church
involved in the working out of the document between 2006 and 2008 were not
unanimous in their assessment of human rights, some wanted total dismissal,
some wanted endorsement. The document is a compromise between these actors. It
is important to be aware that the individual dynamics may since have changed. I
am not sure whether today, in 2014, a new document on human rights of the
Russian Orthodox Church would still occupy a middle-position or would not
demonstrate a regress to earlier, dismissive positions.

AD: You
also note in your first chapter that religious groups in a majority position
tend to be less favourably disposed to human rights than to minority religious
groups. Have you found, e.g., that Catholics or Jews or Muslims in Russia
invoke human rights language more than their Russian Orthodox counterparts?

KS: In the book I note in the first and analyse in
detail in the last chapter that majority religions tend to be less favourably
disposed to human rights than minority religious groups, who invoke the right
to religious freedom in order to assure their survival and flourishing.
Minority religious groups need the protection of the international human rights
regime where majority religions simply rely on traditional privileges. This
dynamic is clearly visible in the Russian case, both in the debates around the
1997 law on religious freedom and in cases on religious freedom that have reached
the European Court of Human Rights. It is, however, not unique to Russia. Also
many Western European countries are in the process of discovering that they
have become, due to immigration, religiously pluralistic societies where
individual human rights trump the historical privileges of waning majority
religions. I have not done systematic research on the way in which minority
religious groups appeal to human rights, but I refer the interested reader to
the work of my colleague Effie Fokas, who is conducting a long-term research project on
precisely this point.

AD: You
note that post-1991, Russia had two very different paths before it, and in the
end chose the path of "religious nationalism." What motivated that
choice--was it purely an anti-Western spirit, or was there something positive
to it?

KS: The two paths I mean are “religious nationalism”
and “religious renewal”. A religious renewal would have required a thorough
process of critical self-reflection, a laying open of the guilt which the
Church had heaped upon itself during the decades of Soviet collaboration and a
renewal of the Church in the spirit of religious dissidence. This did not
happen; what we got instead was continuity and strengthening of the religious
apparatus. I think this choice was motivated less by ideological reasons (anti-
versus pro-Western) but mostly by pragmatic considerations. The religious
nationalism promised more public echo, more political support, and it
apparently convinced many Russians. At the same time, inside the leadership
structure of the Church and on the level of parish communities pockets of
liberal renewal continued and continue to exist. Was there something positive
to the path of religious nationalism? I don’t think so, but inasmuch as I
interpret it not as an ideological, but as a pragmatic development, the only
positive element there was is that the official religious nationalism has left
some space for alternative viewpoints to emerge, which enjoy less visibility,
but continue to exist. I should also add that I feel this space is
significantly narrower today than it was in the period I study in this book.

AD: You
note in your second chapter that the 2000 document "Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church" was very much the product of the
Department for External Church Relations, headed by now-Patriarch Kiril, who
seems to have positioned himself somewhere between "liberals" and
"zealots." Has he maintained that balance since taking over as patriarch?

Source: Mospat.ru

KS: This is the much debated question among scholars
dealing with the Russian Orthodox Church! On the first glance, it would seem
that Kirill has given up his middle-stance in favour of more fundamentalist
positions. He has appointed some real hardliners to important positions inside
the Church, for example Vsevolod Chaplin who became responsible for
Church-Society Relations. Since 2009, when Kirill became Patriarch, we have
also seen a number of events which have tipped the balance in favour of the
zealots: for example the trial of the punk-band Pussy Riot, the legislation
against “homosexual propaganda” and “offense of religious feelings.” But there
are also examples to the contrary, like the relatively balanced stance which
Kirill has assumed in the present crisis in Ukraine (which I have analysed elsewhere). Leaving aside for a moment the position of
Patriarch Kirill and his successful or unsuccessful attempts to maintain an
independent position for the Church, what is clear is that in foreign and also
in Russian public perception, this independence has already been lost. The
Moscow Patriarchate is now widely perceived to stand unconditionally on the
side of Putin and in support of his anti-Western politics.

AD: You
note that the history in the "Bases" document attempts to sketch out
a very different lineage for any notion of human rights in Russia, away from
Western history, and all the way back to Byzantium. Why is that? Why the
constant effort to so vociferously differentiate itself from "the
West"?

KS: Not the entire “Bases of the Social Doctrine”
document, but definitely its section on human rights conveys a strong Orthodox
anti-Westernism that goes back to the Slavophiles and to Orthodox resentments
against the Latin West. The paradoxical feature about this anti-Westernism is
that it comes in a format that is influenced by “Latin” Christian models of
theological reasoning. In my interviews for this book it became clear that the
Russian Orthodox Church has learned (and wanted to learn) from Catholic and
Protestant theologians in matters of social teaching: conferences were held,
working groups were created, position-documents were exchanged. This also explains
the deep disappointment about the “Human Rights Doctrine” expressed by the
German Protestant Churches, an episode I explain in chapter 4 of the book.
These Western theologians felt that they had been part of a real exchange and
had accompanied the Russian Orthodox colleagues in a “learning process” – and then
they saw that the Russian Orthodox Church had given the entire debate an anti-Western
twist.

AD: You
note (p. 101) that the Church today has shifted away from "inward"
focus (on church-state relations) to "outward" focus on issues of
"society, family, and values." Does that reflect new-found strength
in the Church? What are the risks for this strategy? And are Russian Orthodox
Christians fully supportive of this shift or--to go back to your opening
discussion of the Pussy Riot--are they generally more ambivalent?

KS:Yes, I do believe that this reflects a new-found
strength in the Church structure. For a large part of the 1990s and 2000s the
Church was busy with sorting out its own matters: the restitution of Church
property once confiscated by the Soviet state, the establishment of courses
that teach Orthodox “culture” in public schools, the building up of a system of
Orthodox military chaplaincy, etc. Under Patriarch Kirill the Church has now
moved to issues of society, family, and values. It has taken a firm moral
conservative stance on issues of life, sexuality and gender, and religious
freedom. I argue in the book that this shift does not only come from inside the
Russian Orthodox Church, but is also the result of cooperation between Russian
Orthodox actors and traditionalist sections inside the Catholic, Protestant and
Evangelical Churches. My feeling is that ordinary Russian believers feel
somewhat puzzled by this shift. The remaking of post-Soviet Russia as the
world’s leading nation that respects “traditional values” is deeply
paradoxical.

AD: Your data (p. 106-07) revealed that "since 2008, representatives of the Church and the
Russian government have pursued an active human rights agenda at international
level, in particular in the Human Rights Commission of the United
Nations." Clearly it seems to me that one area where we have recently seen
evidence of this is Russia's support for Syria against US intervention in the
on-going civil war. Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church claim to have been
motivated here by their concern to protect the rights of fellow Orthodox Christians in Syria. What do you make of these arguments?
I have not followed the Church’s argumentation on
Syria closely and I was not aware that Putin has motivated his support for
Syria (and Russia’s veto-position in the UN Security Council) on grounds of
intra-Orthodox solidarity. I would interpret this stance merely as a rhetorical
tool to cover up what the Russian agenda really is about: preventing
regime-change at all costs.

AD: In
your opening, and then again in the conclusion of your book, you return to the
idea of Charles Taylor in speaking of a "mutual fragilization" as
taking place in the encounter between Russian Orthodoxy and modernity. Explain
this for us a little bit. Charles Taylor's concept of “mutual fragilization”
adds an important feature to the paradigm of the “post-secular”. Habermas’
notion of post-secular society confidently assumes that religious and secular
actors may learn from each other for the good of society as a whole; mutual
fragilization reminds us of the fact that getting to know the other better may
not always result in greater understanding, but in greater insecurity and self-reflexivity.
Insecurity and self-reflexivity are positive, because hardened-up and
doubt-free identities can be very frightening, whether religious or secular. In
the history of the Russian Orthodox tradition, the period of the Russian
émigré-theologians Sergij Bulgakov, Vladimir Lossky and Georges Florovsky strikes
me as an example of “mutual fragilization”, where both the Orthodox as well as some
of their Western interlocutors were faced with the moral breakdown of their
respective traditions (Bolshevism in the East, Fascism and Nazism in the West),
recognized that they were facing similar questions, learned from another and
enriched their respective standpoints through encounter with the other. In that
particular case, the encounter resulted in the neo-patristic turn in theology,
a point I have made in my book Community after Totalitarianism.AD: Very
interestingly for me in a theology department, you end your book by noting that
you are not a theologian but a political scientist, but nevertheless "it
is there--in theology--where the future trajectory of the encounter of
Orthodoxy and modernity is being mapped out" (p.131). Why do
you say that? Tell us a bit more about how you see this trajectory being mapped
out.

KS: I have studied the Russian Orthodox intellectual
tradition for many years now and I have covered important periods from Solov’ev
and Dostoevskij to the émigré-theologians, to late Soviet dissidence and
contemporary debates. My impression is that during all this history, the
Russian Orthodox Church has found itself tied to the state, has actually
actively tied itself to the state and has failed to give an independent
response to society and the world. These responses have come from elsewhere
inside and outside the Church, from theology and religious philosophy. Such
voices also exist today and many of my Orthodox friends and colleagues
understand themselves as engaged in precisely this endeavour. It is them that I
had in mind when I wrote those pages, obviously with the hope that theology may
at one point prevail over reasons of church-state relations. At the Institute for Human
Sciences in Vienna we organized a workshop on
“Orthodox political theologies” earlier this year, where we brought together
theologians from Russia, Western Europe and the United States. The aim of the
publication that will come out of this meeting is precisely to take stock of
the ways in which Orthodox theologians map out the relation between their
churches and politics.

AD: Sum
up what you hope the book accomplishes

KS: The book wants to make a contribution to
contemporary debates on the compatibility of religious claims and secular norms.
It wants to challenge the prevailing theories of religious-secular
accommodation by studying a “difficult” case like the Russian Orthodox Church’s
treatment of human rights. I may not have managed to give full answers in
chapter 5 of this book, but I am confident that I raised relevant questions
which I intend to explore further. The book also wants to offer a balanced
account of the ideas and politics inside the Russian Orthodox Church. It wants
to highlight one aspect that is frequently overlooked in research in this
field, and that is the interactions and relatedness of the Russian Orthodox
Church with religious actors outside Russia, its engagement on the level of
international institutions and its external relations.

AD: What
projects--books, articles--are you at work on now?
KS: Since finishing the book I have tried to work
further on the theoretical questions that emerge from my Russian case study. I
have made some preliminary considerations on what I perceive as “theology's blind
spot” in contemporary theorizing of religion and politics here and I plan to develop these ideas further into a
full-fledged theoretical contribution. I am also working on a project to study
present-day Russian moral conservatism. You can follow my work on my website and at the IWM.

Subscribe To

About Me

I am the editor of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies; author of Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy; a tenured associate professor and chairman of the Dept. of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana; and a subdeacon of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church (UGCC) resident in the Eparchy of St. Nicholas of Chicago.